We'll Always Have Paris
by Lita's Moonsalt
Summary: The Moulin Rouge. Where the old and rich came to play with the young and beautiful. Aspiring writer Spike Spiegel comes to Tharsis and is pulled into the Moulin Rouge by the alluring Julia...


Disclaimer - I don't own Cowboy Bebop or Moulin Rouge

AN: I Know… what a weird combination. Moulin Rouge and Cowboy Bebop. But the more I thought about it… the more I saw the similarities. You know, girl torn between the man she loves and the man she has to be with. If she's with him, her lover will be killed… they want to run away together, but the girl can't go… has to hurt him to save him. Was I talking about Cowboy Bebop or Moulin Rouge? Both, actually. I thought they traveled on parallel roads.

I won't make them sing. I'm going to try very hard to keep them in character. I don't think that you'd see Spike and Julia burst into song…

I'm not going to keep the original script of Moulin Rouge… because I don't have that much time. Lines might coincide with the movie, but if it doesn't follow the movie letter by letter, don't be upset.

We'll Always Have Paris

_The Greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return._

I sit night after night in my old, cramped, dusty apartment. Day after day, I watch the world from my window. I don't care anymore. It's taken me forever to be able to sit down here. Sit at this typewriter and finally write. Fragilely putting one piece of paper in my typewriter, I am able to type :_The Moulin Rouge_. As if a tidal wave, feelings and memories rush back to me, overwhelming me. Thoughts of her. The love of my life. The Moulin Rouge now sits in the dark. The lights are off, and the curtain closed. It was a shell of it's former self. It's like me. It stays where it is because it has no where else to go. It's still crippled from the loss of it's star, Julia. She was the woman I loved, and she was the star of the Moulin Rouge.

The woman I loved is dead.

It was 1899, and Paris was caught up in the Bohemian spirit, with the ideals of freedom, beauty, truth and love. Most of all, love.

I came to Paris to write. The aspiring writer I was, saw Paris as the best place in the world to write. I wanted to write about love. My father had warned me about going to Paris. He told me I would end up wasting my life at the Moulin Rouge, with can-can dancers. Of course, I didn't believe him. I wanted to write about love. This feeling I hungered for. But there was one problem. I had never been in love.

At that exact moment an unconscious Argentinean fell through my roof. A dwarf then burst through my door, apologizing for the Argentinean.

"He suffers from narcolepsy," explained the dwarf, introducing himself a moment later as Shin. He talked so fast, that I could barely understand him. "He's fine one minute, then," he imitated snoring noises, "unconscious the next."

I nodded. Then, four heads looked down from the hole in my ceiling.

"He's unconscious again?" exclaimed one of them.

Shin nodded.

"Well who are we going to get to fill in for the young, poetic, sensitive goat herder?"

All heads turned to me…

Next thing I knew, I was upstairs, playing the Argentinean's part. It was something very modern, a play, called "Spectacular, Spectacular". There were obviously some creative differences. The four continued to argue about the song lyrics.

"The hills glow with the reverberation of melody?"

"How about the mount clatter with the harmony?"

The head, the writer, looked at all the suggestions with a pout. It came to me suddenly. However, I couldn't get it out. They kept talking.

"The hills-" I started.

"The glorious symphony rebounds on the hills!"

"The hills -"

"The land is filled with the sound of harmony!"

"Hey!" I yelled, getting everyone's attention. "The hills are alive with the sound of music." I said clearly.

The Argentinean suddenly woke up after hearing my line, walked over to me, sized me up and smiled. "I love it! This boy has talent!" he said, grabbing for me, and ending up putting his hand on my crotch. "Nothing funny. I just like talent." he said quickly, retracting it.

By God, it was almost like I sounded an air horn. Everyone stared at me for at least for five minutes before they applauded. That is everyone except the original writer.

"Aw man, Audrey," Shin said to the writer while laughing with glee, "you two should write the show together!"

This didn't set well with Audrey, who decided he would only work solo and promptly laughed.

"Congratulations!" Shin clapped me on the back and laughed.

"On what?"

"You're going to write the show!" he said.

"Me? I don't know… oh no, I can't." I said, trying to get out of the room. The three men tried to stop me.

"You can do it!" said Shin, trying to pull me back into the room.

"I don't know anything about writing a play! I don't know anything about being Bohemian. I don't even know if I am a true Bohemian!"

The three men stopped and gasped. "Do you believe in beauty?"

"Yes," I replied

"Freedom?"

"Yes,"

"Truth?"

"Yes,"

"Love?"

"Love?… Yes. Over all things, Love. Love is like oxygen, love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong." I said, letting myself go off on a tangent.

That was obviously what they wanted to hear, because they cheered.

"You can't fool us! You are Bohemian!"

It was decided that night I was to write Spectacular Spectacular. I would go perform my poetry for Julia at the Moulin Rouge. Once she heard it, Shin decided, she would love it and tell her boss, Mao Yenrai that Spectacular Spectacular would be produced. This was when I had my first drink of Absence.

Installment number one of Moulin Rouge… hope you liked it. I'll try and get more out soon.

Lita's Moonsalt


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